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Comment by __rito__ | Hacker News Reader

> 4. Be part of bigger things

> Being part of bigger things makes us feel valued. Find communities and projects to be part of. Start your own. It could be online or in the real world.

Make sure the groups don't get politically active one way or the other. Today's social landscape is made significantly worse by political polarization dragged to the extreme - fuelled by short form content silos and bubbles. (Tiktok, Instagram, etc.)

Ban politics strictly in the spaces you create, and don't be part of the ones that lean one way or the other - unless you are actively looking to take part in politics.

This was not the case even ten years ago. But now, is.

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I think this is wildly wrongheaded. The socially polite "no politics" is a critical insulator allowing normally non-socially acceptable behavior to grow.

I am convinced it is those in power not wanting an informed populace.

We are not in uninteresting times. People need to be engaging in world around them, not ignoring it.

A: "My neighbors are scared"

B: "Don't talk about that, we might get testy because I think your neighbors should be scared."

I had to tell my parents to stop talking about politics because it was making me dislike them.

They weren’t informed citizens, they were just regurgitating whatever they happened to read in their newspaper that day.

If you pushed them on anything they said they didn’t really have any understanding beneath the headlines they had read.

It would be better for them if they could disengage from it but they don’t seem to want to.

There is nothing good coming out from their engagement.

So no discussion happened and they were left uninformed? I talk through things with my family and share different takes and sources. Some are unhinged and called out. But usually there is lots of common ground. And sometimes changed options.

No single raindrop believes it to be blamed for the flood.

Discussion did take place. There is only so much you can do though.

I’m glad it worked for you but in my case it didn’t.

Ultimately people who continually drag the conversation around to politics just aren’t very nice to be around.

This works with some people and not with others. I’ve found once you have no epistemological common ground or rigor it becomes pointless and not worth having.

Like what do you do if every source that contradicts them about any aspect of the world is considered a lie controlled by <insert boogeyman> (billionaires, liberals, the Jews, whatever)?

I’ve found the majority of people who are really in to regurgitating politics have no interest in actually understanding reality or making political decisions or even political arguments. They are playing a tribal sport and showing the allegiance and righteousness with words. It’s closer to “my sports team is better than your sports team”. In this situation, there is no string of conversation that can convince them otherwise or land real information. The best thing to do is maintain the relationship, let them know your basic positions, and model “people who disagree with you are very normal and won’t mock you if you change your mind.”

That's great that this works for your family, but you should be careful not to project your personal experience onto others.

An actual productive political discussion where someone changes their mind afterwards is very rare.

It requires a bilateral respect for difference of opinion, a willingness to introspect and challenge one's own positions, and the emotional maturity not to take disagreement personally.

There are some people with whom you'll just never get this. If those people are your family or close friends, a mutual understanding of "we both know we disagree on this topic, so let's avoid it" can be the best you will get.

Sounds like you could use some time in a group that bans discussion of politics.

The way to cause effective local change among people you know is to build meaningful relationships with psychological safety. They will figure out your political opinions with time, and they will be more subtly but durably influenced.

Jamming it into conversations with strong moral judgement attached to the opinion will make people dislike you, and it will not influence people who disagree with you. It will make them harden in their existing views because the emotional awfulness of what you are saying (implicitly accusing them of being bad people, or making them feel under threat) reinforces how correct they have been to have held those views.

Inquiry: what do you define as politics?

Example: is a trans person in your community political for using their preferred pronouns? Going to their preferred bathroom? Is a gay person political for mentioning their same sex spouse? Is an immigrant political for discussing their immigration process (“sorry can’t make it I have an apt with the embassy”)? Is tits or gtfo political?

I’m not trying to be contrarian this is simply my experiences running like a board game group or something. It’s easy to say no politics but then someone’s normal (eg. My name is Helen, where’s the woman’s restroom?) can cause someone to refuse (“that is clearly a man”!) and now you have a mess on your hands as an organizer.

For me personally the line is crossed when you start making judgments.

Having an appointment with the embassy is not political. Saying the government shouldn’t force people to go to the embassy is.

> sorry, wont make it. Appointment.

> sorry, wont make it. Stupid appointment.

Banned!

That’s incredibly messy, for example, a friend of mine was recently forced out of the country because her Ukrainian refugee visa was revoked. Are you saying this community member cannot be sad or angry about this, because that’s too political? We have to be like damn this is the last board game with Nancy but we can’t talk about why because that’s Polticial?

I think it’s the opposite of messy tbh. It’s clear cut. You might not like it but that’s a separate discussion.

Re your colleague: I wouldn’t want to talk about it other than showing empathy for the person. At your workplace… outside of work you can talk whatever you want.

This isn’t a work context. This is a board game meetup, lol. Do you not have friends outside of work?

Oh I see. so it’s my fault now that I didn’t understand what you were describing.

And no. I don’t have any friends not even at work.

I literally said in my first post that I am speaking in a board game context.

Maybe it starts when some people start to apply some power on other people ? But all your examples are people talking about themselves : their own lives, their own choices, their own specifics, their own struggles. I would say people can have all this and mention it as long as it stays on the fringe and does not become a topic to debate. This would be outside the scope of the group.

Maybe other people should avoid commenting on peoples life / choices / specifics / struggles, and the atmosphere may stay nice.

Here’s the thing though: Helen is presenting herself to be called Helen. That’s inherently asking other people to call her Helen and imposing on people to allow a person they see as male to enter a female bathroom! For people who see being transgender as a political issue, being asked to call a trans person by their name is bringing politics into it because theyre being imposed on to recognize a trans woman as female for bathroom purposes.

Thats what I mean when i think “no politics” gets weirdly messy. Like to me it’s not political to let Helen use the female bathroom, but that’s not a given. I’ve also seen situations like, is it political if David brings his boyfriend to the DnD group and they role play a gay couple? What about if Emily, an IRL conservative, says she’s not being political when her lawful good paladin tries to break up the gay couple in the game, because being gay is evil in her DnD religion?

These are issues of civility, not politics.

I don’t see what you mean. It really isn’t considered civil to let men use the female restroom when a male restroom is available outside of circumstances like taking one’s young children to the restroom. If one sees a trans woman as a man, it is uncivil for “him” to parade at being a woman.

It is also super normal for couples to roleplay being couples, gay or not. What do you call civil here, to let a (in the mind of an Anti-homosexual conservative) illegitimate couple pretend as if it’s on the level of a legitimate one? Or it’s maybe uncivil for the illegitimate gay guy to come in and force the rest of the group to sit in discomfort with his sexuality?

In my opinion “maintain civility” is equally as fraught as “no politics” because different people have radically different opinions of what these mean. Often times when it comes to “identity politics” it’s mutually exclusive.

Politics is the apparatus of civility. It determines how we treat the uncivil, and the direction we push for “new” civility standards.

That actually sounds like a relatively simple one to resolve although the practicality might be a bit poor. The nonpolitical resolution is to use a space with 1 small unisex bathroom and insist that everyone keep it clean. If there isn't a consensus on who gets a special bathroom then there shouldn't be one.

So forcing everyone to change their meeting place to a venue with a unisex bathroom only is not political, but a trans woman using a woman’s bathroom is political?

Also, Helen still wants to be called Helen and still wants to be referred to as a she. By this logic, everyone must go by they/them? Or what?

> So forcing everyone to change their meeting place to a venue with a unisex bathroom only is not political, but a trans woman using a woman’s bathroom is political?

Nobody is calling for unisex bathrooms as far as I know, so it can't really be called a political choice. It is just practical - there isn't a consensus about who should get a special bathroom. How can there be a special bathroom if we don't know who is supposed to be using it?

> Also, Helen still wants to be called Helen and still wants to be referred to as a she. By this logic, everyone must go by they/them? Or what?

I don't see how to get away from that one, there is a fundamental rift between the people who think individuals control their identity and the people who think that identity is constructed by someone's peers (see also, shaking off an unwelcome nickname).

But that is an inescapable problem that has dogged humanity since before we were a species so good luck excluding it from any space. If it flares up and diplomacy can't smooth it out then some organiser is just going to have to make a call.

I think you’re missing my point here, which is that “no politics” is an impossible standard for any given social group even if the social group isn’t itself a political movement. There will need to be some measure of baseline politics, like trans people are welcome, jokes about Indian people being smelly are fine, gay people shouldn’t bring their partners around, “retarded” is/isn’t cool to use. Etc.

I did just write "that is an inescapable problem that has dogged humanity since before we were a species" you know. But nonetheless the trans bathroom one has a simple and nonpolitical resolution until the people who want segregation start making an argument about why some people need a special bathroom. At which point the gender thing probably doesn't matter.

This is a part of why people are hopeful that they can keep spaces focused. Many of the popular "political issues" are more theatre around identity than any real substance.

So you’re in agreement with me that “no politics” isn’t really a thing in a space? That’s all I’m saying. I’m using transgender issues as an example but my overall point is that there’s no such thing as a space that is focused around something and simply gets a no politics rule. There is always some kind of politics in play simply by nature of politics being an extension of acceptable and unacceptable community, e.g. a person who happens to be trans is the hot topic now, but within my parents generation probably the political act is enforcing a shared bathroom between whites and blacks!

> So you’re in agreement with me that “no politics” isn’t really a thing in a space?

Yeah, its a meaningless term. The people calling for it are clearly being inarticulately and are trying to say something else.

But the trans bathroom thing has an obvious resolution. The people fighting over it are more about wanting to pick a fight than that there is an actual issue; if the people around me wanted me to use the female bathroom or the male bathroom either is cool. It's a bathroom. They meet a unisex need. If segregation is an issue in the abstract then stop doing that until there is an objective standard to use instead of a subjective one.

'Everyone who disagrees with my obvious resolution only wants to pick a fight over what I deem a non-issue for me, and therefore, everyone.'

That is generally how it works when people don't accept obvious resolutions. If you want to challenge its obviousness be my guest. It is pretty normal for a DnD/board game group to be meeting at someone's house where there is literally only one bathroom. It is hard to miss the fact that both genders can use it without complaint.

In a sporting context or similar where people are needing to change clothes then it isn't an easy one, but in this context it isn't much of a challenge.

Are you saying that a policy which works for invited guests in a private, one-bathroom home, should, based on its success there, be adopted at a societal scale?

Politics in groups is like pornography

You can't define it but you know it when you see it

Interesting, that none of those things have been an issue in the 90s. At least in my country. You just didn't have to think about this, because except gays (who were accepted by young, and frowned up by old), there were no discussion about any of that.

Someone made this into an issue, and politics. And things have got much worse, during all this.

It would be more useful to say that communities should be organised around a set of principles and be ruthless about sticking to them.

The issue isn't so much that groups become "political" (which is a hard standard to define) as much as they lost focus on a goal (like being a book club) and morph into an in-group, an out-group and a set of memes used to identify the in-groupers and ostracise the out-groupers.

The point of most political memes is to identify a small group who are coordinating to try and control a larger mass of people. When the local book club becomes a conduit for them that is obviously toxic for a general member joining because of the joy of reading. A book club community should prioritise books and including people if and when they enjoy books.

Or don't join groups where you disagree on politics. There's no excuse, really. My own family is enough already

All groups have internal politics, which is worse.

That is true. But you can rise above it, or choose to ignore it. If not, then it is not the right group.

I have been part of groups with vile internal power struggles, politics. I never ever took part. Was okay. Maybe there is a threshold somewhere that I have not found yet.

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